They came in sight out of the clear black sky of the moonlet, and hovered until the ship before them had landed. Then they dropped slowly into the landing place assigned to them, coming to a full landing just in time to see the next ship begin to drop. Another ship would come from outer space at this time, and assume the hovering area, awaiting its turn.
Ships took off at the same rate. But unlike the cumbersome landing feat, they leaped upward into the sky, running a direction-beam before them, and disappeared in seconds.
The nerve center of this activity was a squat building on the edge of the port. In it worked Maynard's spies—his agents provocateur. A black chamber of intense men, all working their shifts over huge mental projectors.
Solarian shipping was being completely disrupted.
No ship took off from any of the spaceports without Guy's knowledge. And no cargo worth having ever reached its destination. Mephisto was becoming the most valuable planet-system in the Solar sphere, for the cargoes that were pirated and brought to Mephisto were those items that Terra and Mars could not find in plenty at home.
The capture of single ships had gone on unchecked for a long time. Then protection began to go with the shipping, and finally the spacelines were running in full convoys that sported constellation craft for protection. But Guy's fleet collected the constellation craft as easily as they caught tramp spacers. When a spaceship is going a thousand miles per second, a barrier-sown toroid could burst from space before the huge ship. It was a matter of dropping the toroid so close to the nose of the ship that the turreted AutoMacs had no time to answer the impulses that came from the detector-couplers. The huge ship plunged through the toroid, and left the rest of the unprotected convoy for Maynard's choice.
And when they sent decoys, Maynard's men ignored them. Only when the carriers held valuable material did they suffer.
The ships of Ertene came in for their share. Guy worried about the thought-beam instrument that he had left there; he knew that no sensible world would adhere to a program of destroying such a device. One of the main thought-beam jobs was continually directed at Ertene and the thought-beam instrument that Guy had left. So far, they had done nothing but use the thing locally. It would not reach Mephisto by a billion miles, and so Guy knew his secret was safe.
At least for the time being.
But molesting Ertene on Ertene's own ground was not possible; once they came within range of Ertene's thought-beam, the secret of avoiding the vortex would be out. Only those ships of Ertene that came outside of range were taken—and they were all too few.